PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. #71 Dr Karen Becker DVM is interviewed today about pet health and her new book The Forever Dog Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura Dog Behaviorist, Dog Behaviorist
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PET TALK TODAY Dog Training with Will Bangura. #71 Dr Karen Becker DVM is interviewed today about pet health and her new book The Forever Dog Dog Training, Dog Trainer, Dog Behaviorist. Cat Trainer, Cat Training, Pet Trainer, Pet Training, Will Bangura Dog Behaviorist, Dog Behaviorist
If you need professional help please visit my Dog Behaviorist website.
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Raised by wolfs with canine DNA in his blood, having trained more than 24,000 vets helping you and your fur babies thrive live in studio it's pet talk today with will bang gua answering your pet behavior and training questions. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your host and favorite pet behavior expert will man GU good
Speaker 2:Saturday morning pet lovers. Hey, welcome to pet talk today. We're so glad that you're here. Do us a favor. If you're watching hit that like button, show us some love. Do us also a favor comment in the comment section, what kind of pets you have and where you are listening from. We've got a fantastic show today. If you're brand new to pet talk today, we're here each and every Saturday morning from nine to 10:00 AM. Pacific time. That's 12 noon to 1:00 PM Eastern time, and we interview people in the pet profession industry. Uh, we do shows on behavior and training. Uh, we take your questions. We answer your, uh, emails and your comments today. We are so very, very fortunate to have a very special, uh, guest with us today. Um, this has been two years in the making and uh, in just a second, I'm gonna bring on Dr. Karen Becker, who is a veterinarian author, pet industry and influencer. She's known for her common sense approach to creating health for companion animals and has been embraced by millions of pet lovers around the world. Making her the most. This is amazing making her the most followed veterinarian on social media with over 2.5 million followers among her own film accolades is the dog cancer series pet fooled, which she co-produced. It's a six hour documentary, which investigates cancer as a metabolic disease and includes interviews with veterinary oncologist, researchers and scientists evaluating nutritional interventions as a tool for managing some of the most aggressive canine cancers with 20 plus years as a practicing clinician, she has spent her career equipping and empowering animal guardians to make intentional lifestyle decisions, to enhance the health span and of their animal. And her first co-written cookbook provided nutritionally complete recipes for homemade pet meals, and that sold over 100,000 copies. But in addition to that, um, she's got a new book that, uh, came out in 2021 and it is called the forever dog. And believe it or not, it was number one New York times best seller list book. Um, ladies and gentlemen, help me welcome a rockstar in the pet world. Dr. Karen Becker, Dr. Becker. We are so glad that you're here today. Welcome to pet talk today. How are you?
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm doing well will. And I can't think of a better way to spend an hour than shouting with people that are fired up about taking the best care of their animals. So it's a joy to be here. Thank you for
Speaker 2:Having well, you know, when I say you're a rockstar, I mean that because, you know, we promote our shows and we have with our events, we understand we can see how many people are interested, how many people are going and you have had the most traction. We've got more listeners today. We've got more viewers today than, uh, than we ever have. And the great thing about it is, is that this, uh, live Facebook live video will keep getting seen over and over and over. We're recording this for the pet talk today podcast, which is heard in over 78 countries around the world. Yep. Um, so we are so excited. Um, you know, a lot of the people that are watching today know of you, but there's a lot of people probably that don't know about you. So why don't you start by just kind of telling us who you are and what you do?
Speaker 3:Well, you bet I, and I am a proactive wellness veterinarian. That means that my goal is to kind of empower pet parents, guardians, owners, whatever. However you identify yourself as, as an animal lover. My job is to partner with you to make knowledgeable decisions to intentionally, you know, to extend a lifespan, which includes how we want our animal super healthy and wellbeing to really be able to make common sense choices, to make our animals feel better, longer. So I veterinarian trade and I knew very age that wanted to vet also home. And I didn't realize that I didn't realize that not everyone grows up with parents that say, Hey, we need to move our bodies every day and we need to spend time outside. And we need to, you know, when I got to my teenage years, we need to help manage stress. And, you know, there's things you need to do to make sure your body doesn't break over time. I just thought all that was normal until I got, you know, I realized in my late teens that I had a very special and very supportive and very proactive family, but because that's the foundation of who I was, I grew up in Iowa, both of my parents are teachers. And they're really focused on the fact that if you know more, you can do better. And I still believe that that's so true. So when I became a veterinarian, it was very clear to me that the way I can can best minimize heartbreak for, for owners is to help them make better choices before their animals get sick. And that is exactly what I have done. I set up a proactive animal hospital in Chicago. Then I set up a proactive, exotic animal hospital because I treat a lot of endangered species and exotics. And then I set up a rehabilitation in physical therapy center because the physical aspect of keeping pets mechanically moving well, can't be underestimated. So my goal is to do everything I can to help bring information so that pet owners are helping to prevent their pets from breaking on the front side, instead of treating disease down the road.
Speaker 2:What, what are some of the things that, um, you focus on in, in terms of being able to help pet parents with that?
Speaker 3:So, and actually that, when I wrote that forever dog, I wrote forever dog during COVID, which was a perfect time writing a book was on my bucket list, but I, I didn't, it's hard for me. I am a go, go go girl. And I have a lot going on all the time because I figure I'm gonna live to be a hundred and I wanna have my body and brain be with me for that time. But I have booked enough things I wanna do to be, but I have to get it by hundred. So I have a lot on my, so during COVID when the whole world stuff, I'm like, you know, what's a perfect time. I'm not this these two years, I'm gonna write a book. So that's what I did, but it was really good. I had to succinctly kinda frame out what are my points of intentionally creating health and wellness. And so I came up with a strategy. So D is the diet and nutrition part, which of course plays into how, how we nourish our animals, plays into their health and their lifespan, the O with optimal movement, which means animals need to move their bodies regularly. There is no pill for exercise. There's no pill for muscle tone. There's no pill to prevent, to make ligaments in tendon strong and resilient. We have to create those opportunities for our animals to move their bodies, to have a strong, resilient frame and musculoskeletal system. And then the, uh, the GS for genetic predispositions, we know that there are some breeds that are significantly more damage than others when it comes to genetic laws or mutations, but just because our animals could be carrying some DNA that isn't so desirable, it doesn't mean that our animals are gonna be victims of their DNA. And that's a really empowering point that pet parents need to know about that just because maybe our German shepherd mix has the DNA for hip dysplasia to be expressed. Doesn't mean he or she's gonna express. So there are things we can do to help downregulate genetic expression. And then the F is for stress. And when I talk about stress, I'm not talking about just emotional, mental stress being in a crate for eight hours a day. I'm talking about indoor chemical stress, which epidemiologists researchers toxicologists tell us that our homes are some of the most toxic places for animals to hang out. I'm talking about outdoor chemical stress. That means the lawn pesticides, fertilizers things we're putting on our yards that our dogs and cats are rolling around in. And I'm also talking about veterinary stress, chemical stress, meaning myself and my colleagues. We sometimes recommend treatments that have side effects. Like we tell you to intentionally put pesticides on your animals every month for control. And although control is totally necessary. Sometimes there are side effects. So I put together this dos strategy to kind lump together. All of the things that pet owners need to be thinking about concurrently to intentionally minimize risk of disease occurring and maximize the
Speaker 2:What, what are some of the things that they can do? What are the most important things that can do to bring about this optimal health for theirs, uh, to bring about greater longevity
Speaker 3:You think about. So when we, when we track the, the forever dog, so what I by that is the dog. I'm the longevity science cool technology is that, especially in human space, top longevity, researchers for humans are beginning to use as their test subjects. And I love this because they're using dogs to emulate as little sentinels, as little reflections of humans and because dogs and humans co-evolve, and because dogs are of best. And because vast majority people in north, around the world that are listening to the podcasts, we love dogs, but because we kind of hold dogs captive in our homes and they are reflective and, or victims to our lifestyle. If we are healthy humans that are focused on intentionally reducing disease, we tend to extend those same variables to everyone on our home. We tend to think about our kids, nourishing our kids while you know, we're not gonna go to the fast food dollar menu every day, all day for our kids. We realize as human parents, that our kids need a variety of different nutrients. You know, our pediatricians, our doctors or nutritionists are telling us to minimize the amount of processed foods we're putting in our bodies, try to get our kids to eat more fresh living foods, try and diversify our diet. You know, don't just rely on ultra process foods. Well, it's interesting because veterinarians are the last remaining group of health and wellness professionals that actually give the exact opposite of ice. The vast majority of veterinarians, my colleagues will say, only feed your dogs are cats, ultra process foods from the time that they're born to the time that they die. And for a lot of people, when they stop about that, they're like, oh my doesn't make sense. And why is that? So I also, why is that? Why, why would say that feeding from death is a good idea. We know every longevity, wellness, gut volume scientist in the world says that is a bad idea. So when I started these questions this years, that I was like, Hey, think I'm not sure. I, we have paradigm set for dogs and cats. I, we don't have a wellness paradigm set. I've been knocking around these questions for a long time. So my obsession is what can we do to get dogs and cats to live the healthiest long possible by making good choices on the front end? My co-writer, uh, Rodney AIB is obsessed with just plain old dogs. He is a dog dad. He is not a veterinarian. And he's just obsessed with tracking down the oldest dog in the world and finding out what their parents did. And didn't do like, sometimes people just like have outlier dogs. They don't see good food. They, you know, they're chained to a tree in the backyard and these dogs can live to 14. So did they? Was it good luck? Was it good? Genetics probably. But Rodney was obsessed with determining these really unbelievably long lived dogs that far supersede any other average lifespan of dogs around the world. Could their owners have been doing something or several things that may have resulted in these dogs living exceptionally long life. So that was his question. My question was, is there any science to back up that information? So we decided to blend these two ideas and, and thoughts together. Rodney interviewed the owners of the oldest dog in the world. And then I went to the top research lab, studying longevity, uh, as well as really, um, I went to geneticists, I went to epidemiologists, I tracked down the top scientist. We went to Institute, we interviewed no prize winners. And we went to David Sinclair at Harvard longevity lab. We talked to everyone and we presented this information from these exceptionally long, what they did and didn't, and then we, these research to reverse engineer and what they gave us in terms of, I, I wrote a 700 page book with over 500 references. And Harper Collins by publisher said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You'll chop out half this book. You can have a four page book. Uh, and you have to put all the references online because it's literally a hundred extra pages of paper. So we ended up with book that summarizes all of the things that pet parents, pet owners, dog owners can be doing to minimize the chances of genetic or epigenetic diseases being expressed and giving your animals, the fullest most abundant thriving life. So when we think about when it comes to the, or the diet, you know, the top microbiologists, including Tim specter from king college, he's one of the most cited microbiologists in the world. He was the one that said to us, I can't think of anything more destructive to a dog's microbiome than just feeding the same food every day. So my first tip would be, will think about how much you can diversify your dog's diet. And what we mean by that is the pet food industry has done a little bit of damage over the last 50 years in saying, never change your dog's food. And we know that that's a marketing gimmick, that it's a bad idea to feed you get the same set of nutrients. You get no acid diversification. You don't really do anything to build your dog's microbiome. So we know that that's bad advice, but people listening to this are gonna say, OK, cool. That makes total sense. But how do I diversify my dog's diet? Well, it's really simple and it doesn't need to be stressful and above all, it's really important that you improve your dog or cat's lifestyle incrementally at a pace that resonates with you. That makes sense with you, that your budget can afford, and that you are able to do the research and the background information. So you feel confident knowing that you can open your refrigerator and offer your dog the little dented blueberries at the bottom of that container. Don't throw them out, like feed them to your dog. In fact, Dr. David Sinclair, this top Harvard geneticist and longevity expert said to me, do you know, Karen, all those dented rasp and blueberries, all the fruits in the fridge and the veggies in the fridge that have a little brown spot. He said, I cut those out. And I feed those to my dog because I know that when a fruit or vegetable undergoes stress and there's a dink or a dent or a cut that the plant sends more polyphenols and more antioxidants to fix that wound. So he said, I intentionally buy, produce that isn't perfect. And then I feed those imperfect parts to my, because he said, I want my dogs to get those food based antioxidants and polyphenols. And you know, those, those, all those super green food nutrients, I wanna pass those up the food chain. So you can start diversifying your dog's gut health by just sharing fresh foods from the fridge. So let's remind all your listeners that there's a few foods. We don't feed the dog or cats. We don't feed onions or leaks. So don't feed onions from your fridge. It's a bad idea. It can cause anemia, hemolytic anemia. We don't feed grapes and RA to our dogs because there's a bunch of potential theories, but Taric acid is the, is the front and center theory on why some dogs go into kidney failure when they eat grapes or raisin. So don't do that. And then of course, chocolate don't feed chocolate. The other thing I'll mention to, to your listeners and you probably experienced this too. Well, if you like on AKC website, ORs, there's this except long of foods that say don't feed these food to your dog. And it really makes me, in fact, in the book, we call it food fear. And the internet is teaming with all of these food, fear facts like raw almond words of common warning is you feed the same parts of fruits and veggies to your toddlers that you do to your dogs. You're gonna chop up the apple. You're not gonna feed an apple to your kid. Don't feed it to your dog. You're not gonna feed an avocado pit to your kid. Don't feed it to your dog. You're not gonna feed a pineapple to your human kid. Don't feed it to, there's literally not much coming outta your fridge, your suggesting nutrition, the amount of free, free, easy, fresh foods from the fridge. And that's not adding anything to your budget. Everyone trims the tops and bottoms, carrot trims the tops and bottoms, green beans, you all those S in sit, give bite of your straw. And that's a great way to diversify their gut bio.
Speaker 2:Now, I've got a question for you. When we are giving fruits and vegetables to our pets, can they break them down and digest them? Do we need to help them? I've heard different things. I've heard we need to juice and puree them. I heard them. We need to perhaps give them, um, digestive enzymes, cuz they lack cellulose. Is there any truth to that? Can you
Speaker 3:Speak to that? Yeah. So, so great question. They, they do dogs and cats, scavenging carni, carni cellulose ton is pancreatic enzyme carbs cats don't produce cellulose like horses and cows, but that's actually to their benefit because that's where the magic of the prebiotic fibers that are found in fresh fruits and veggies. Those prebiotic fibers, because pets don't have cellulose. That's where the magic happens in their colon. Short fatty acids ate and a whole bunch of amazing prebiotic bacterial happen in your intestines. And that's actually what creates the prebiotic, the probiotic prebiotic fiber effect that creates the postbiotics that creates gut health for listeners that like I have no idea what just said 70 to 80% of your dog's immune system lies in his or her GI tract. And we can either nourish that immune system through diversified, fresh, healthy foods, or we end up creating a whole lot of gut issues and issues which create leaky gut and dysbiosis, intermittent, intermittent, diarrhea, loose those nutrients and beneficiaries bioactive compounds that actually nourish and restore the gut. But it's about particle size. So what do I mean by that? If you're, if you let's just say you decide I'm little slice of that come out in poop, you chop the smaller for the vast majority of dogs you're able to offer them. I don't know what you recommend when you're training. Well, I recommend P size training treats. Yes. Like literally the tiniest. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. So if you're feeding P size bites of green banana green banana has unbelievable amount, a prebiotic fiber, it's amazing for IBD IBS dog. That's really good. So you can just chop up a green banana and they it's together. They're super starchy. It's really firm. You can take a slice of banana quarter and again, four times and you have like tiny training treats that are for IBS, IB dogs. They actually go into a training pouch. They hold together. You're gonna see those come out in the poop. So to answer your question, of course, dogs and cats are not big chews. They produce a ton of amylase to process carbohydrates. So you don't have to worry about, oh my gosh, you know, are they gonna, are they gonna be able to digest it? They can. We know through lots of research that they can digest. Just fine. So the key is you wanna chop it up to be small enough that they are getting the benefit of being able to extract the, the nutrients from those fresh foods when you offer them.
Speaker 2:OK. So, you know, there's so much controversy out there and there's so much different information when it comes to pet foods, it's all, it can be all very, very confusing. Um, you know, the latest thing that you know is confusing. I think out there is, you know, the information that's come out and, and nobody, you know, there's different, uh, thoughts on it. And that is, you know, grain free or not grain free. Do we have a problem with grain-free diets contributing, uh, to dilated, uh, cardiomyopathy? Or is that somebody trying to, uh, take something that has maybe very little influencer and try to make it the big influencer and not talk about the things that are the big influencers for that? Can you talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 3:You bet. You bet. And its the world of food is incredibly confusing and you on of that, the illicit just unethical marketing, the association requirements requirements. It's a private organization. It's not FDA run. It's not run by, you know, any type of public food safety commission at all. It's a private organization that sets the minimum nutrient requirements for dogs and cats. Europe has also a similar standard. They have better standards in my opinion, for, for nutrient profiles, especially for growing large breed dogs, the European nutrient standards I think are more, but the is I am thankful that we have an organization that does set minimum nutrient requirements to prevent animals of from dying of nutrient deficiencies. However, I think all of your listeners would agree that not dying is not the same as thriving. Those are two different. Those are two different categories. Not dying means that your animal could certainly be plagued with recurrent medical issues that take you to the veterinarian. Six to eight times a year, chronic ear infections, chronic skin issues, chronic yeast, bad breath, loose stool, all those things that are the top reasons you end up taking your dog or cat to the veterinarian, those are dietary induced issues. So it's really difficult. When you think about the entire pet food industry, there's all sorts of issues going on. Do we have quality control issues? Yes, yes we do. In pet food. There is sadly, you know, everything that is approved consumption gets a S D a food stamp of approval. Everything that's rejected for one reason or another, whether it's, you know, meat that has an or a tumor in it, whether it's grains that have microtoxins, which are fungal loads that are high for human consumption, all the leftovers that fail human food inspection go pet food. So there's a big difference between pet feed and human food. So one is human grade, of course, and the other is pet. So we have to be clear percent of pet food is not app made from ingredients, not approved for human consumption. So do we already right there? Do we wonder, okay. If it's made from rejected recycled feed stuff from the human food industry failed in what's the quality of the raw material? That be a question number one number. The question is how biologically appropriate is the food that I'm feeding and what we mean by biologically appropriate is this, uh, before I was a veterinarian, I was a wildlife biologist. And one of the things you'll learn if you're wildlife biologist is that every species has a set of nutrient requirements that their metabolic machine Rene to function ly, meaning you have to nourish a species to which nature intended it to be nourished when it cut. So cows and horses are vegans. They eat plant material and they have to eat a lot of it. If you try to force a steak on a vegan animal, like a horse or cow, they would just die. Dogs are scavenging, carnivores, and cats are carni. They need to have healthy lean unadulterated meat to be optimally healthy. And that's just wildlife biology physiology 1 0 1, but here's ticker dogs and cats can be nutritionally abused more so than vegan cows and horses. And what do I mean by that? We can actually start increasing the amount of unnecessary starch and carbohydrates and pet foods to be pretty darn high. In fact, we can go high enough that the amount of corn wheat rice, so tapioca, quinoa, garbanzo beans, lentil peas, all of those vegan starches. We can starting that in food because it's far cheaper to feed all of those starchy carbs than to buy rendered meat. So that is exactly what pet food companies have done in the last 20 years when grain-free foods came about grain-free foods came about in the early nineties because corn, wheat and rice, I think some pet owners were recognizing, you know, what, some of these staple carbohydrates, my pets are sensitive to and they're creating weight issues. When we carload anything, the tendency is to gain weight. So the popularity of grain free foods came about as an alternative marketing solution to the problem. Well, grain free pet foods oftentimes have more carbs and more starch. Then the grain based foods. And that's where the problem came in. When we begin nourishing carni as vegans, and we give 50% grain or, uh, you know, uh, starch based legumes and peas and vegan based proteins. And then we go to maybe, or 55% of these plant based proteins. And then we go to 6% plant poachings on the front of the label of that dog food. It says grain free, what people don't understand unless they do the carb equation. They don't understand that they're basically feeding a very low percentage of meat to their animals day after day after day and over month and months and months of feeding a high carbohydrate grain-free diet, your dogs and cats can become amino acid de specifically. They can become deficient and acids necessary to not just make torn in the body, but for normal physiologic processes of heart function, but also other organ functions as well will. So really what the grain free DCM issue is. It's an amino, it's a meat based amino acid deficiency. And when you do the car equation, I strongly recommend everyone over. If you're feeding dry ultra food, which means kibble or dry food, you need to flip over that bag of food. Find the guaranteed analysis. You're gonna add up the amount of fiber. You're gonna add up the amount of protein. You're gonna add up the amount of fat. You're gonna look at that Ash content and add that in there. You're gonna add up those numbers and subtract it from a hundred you'll note on the G analysis that suspiciously carbohydrates are missing. Yep. When you and I flip over any type of human food, you can see right on the nutritional panel, it'll say carbohydrate mode. Cause it's a requirement. The pet food industry thinks it would confusing to pet, to list carbohydrate. Well, that's tell you they listed carbohydrate content on side of pet foods. Pet food owner would be like, holy, this is a bunch of filler. I'm feeding my dog or cat primarily filler. That's why they're not listing carbohydrate content. So my best advice to listeners is find out how much carbs your dog or cat are actually eating carbs in the form of starch. Now what I'm not talking about, these amazing prebiotic fibers that are absolutely critical for, for maintaining gut health. I'm talking about starch, which means when you subtract the fiber outta plant based food, you are left with starch, which becomes sugar, sugar. And that really is the culprit. So I recommend feeding less than 20% starch to dogs and cats. Well, you probably know this dogs and cats don't even have ament. Don't need any carbs to be healthy. So you get those carbs down. I feed my dogs and cats less carbs, but at least less than percent. And if you know that youre deriving 80% of your calories, that you're nourishing your dog or cat with from lean hole, unadulterated meats, you'll never have DCF. The problem is 99% of pet don't know that. So the DCM issue in a nutshell is an amino acid deficiency that, uh, has come about because we are trying to produce cheap foods that we sell for some of these grain free foods are 120 bucks a bag, but that doesn't mean that they are biologically appropriate, meaning that the carb content is down below 20%. So once you have all the information, we're not gonna chase a brand or a flavor, you're not gonna ever, in my opinion, be sold out to any one brand. The key is you're going to do this independent carbohydrate based calculation. So, you know, yes, this body in a way that resonate physiology you's dog's body.
Speaker 2:And you know, when you look at the foods out there, not only the, the grain free, but even the grain, uh, the foods with grain in it. And, and I've sat in front of clients, I've said, Hey, bring out your, your bag. And I've done just what you said, add up all those ingredients and then subtract from a hundred. And in some cases we're looking at 60% sugar.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. And people I tell people to always sit down when they do the carbohydrate calculation, there are, that are on premium kibble in any way, translates into that food being appropriate for your dog. It does not. So rather than buy the most expensive food, go for the most nourishing food. But what that means is you have enough tools in your tool, but you have enough knowledge to not be, you know, to not be kinda wowed by amazing marketing or how much you're spending or the glossy packaging or above all those, those darn key, those, those selling height, marketing words, like this is a, this is a freeze dried raw food. Now freeze dried raw food actually can occur. But that whole term raw raw means that if you leave the food out for eight hours, it's going to go, ranted flies will come and lay eggs and gross things happen. That's the definition of raw food. If you have a shelf stable food, then of course it's not raw because it's been processed in some way to make it shelf stable. So part of the issue is just waiting through the super confusing marketing issues and that in and of itself takes a lot of time and knowledge because it's confusing
Speaker 2:With all of the pet foods that are out there. You know, we've got so many different options. We've got, uh, the kibble and, and I want you to talk about ultra processed in a second. Um, we've got canned foods. We've got, um, I think it's like more cooked, fresh food. I don't know what they call it. The it's not raw mm-hmm<affirmative>, but they come in like these tubes and it's called fresh. And then of course we've got, you know, raw diets and, and we've, they're out there there's excuse me, frozen formulated, raw diets. There's raw diets that people are doing themselves making themselves. Um, and I'm sure there's pros and cons to all of them. Can you talk about that?
Speaker 3:You bet. And that probably is my biggest passion is that we, we really need to think about a couple of different things. If you're hearing this for the first time, you know, right now, and you think, oh my gosh, I've been feeding the same ultra food for my whole life. Don't throw your food out. You have a couple different options and really it comes down to your budget will. And that's something I'm very sensitive to. Some people, you know, can afford to buy any food. They just want the best food, but most people are very focused on the fact that they have to find a food that falls within their budget. So you have a couple of different options if you are only feeding Ultrapro food. And so the let's start there. The definition of ultra foods is foods that have been radically altered from their original format and that involves heat processing. So we adopt the human definition of ultra process food foods as well. And we know that after two high heat processes, the food is considered as well as grinding freezing, and then extrusion it's considered process. Once the average bag of dry kibble has been high heat process, those ingredients four times. So literally the nutrition has been cooked outta those foods. So the top producing dry food manufacturers in the world, they order in big giant bags of ground, you know, ground corn, ground wheat, ground lentil, all of these ground materials that are already cooked. They're already dried, they're already processed. And then they blend those together to create a batter. And then it's heated yet again at very high temperatures through an extruder to create this little ground pellet that we feed to our animals. It's then heated again, to dry the extruded food. After it comes outta the extruder and then AED or a flavor, enhancer is sprayed on the top so that your pets will eat it. That's what kibble is. And so if you recognize that those high heat processes are not just destroying nutrients well, they're creating, uh, a compound called advanced and product. They're creating some unwanted byproducts through carbohydrates, the sugar in carbohydrates, reacting with protein at these high temperatures. It creates this chemical reaction that permanently changes the S of the food, creating these unwanted chemical structures, advanced product. And we kinda term that age a and that are the byproduct of high heat process actually contribute to aging, your dog and cat. In fact, the, uh, some brand new research came up that we highlighted in the book. When we look at the level of these unwanted products that create heart disease, liver disease, kidney disease, autoimmune disease, GI disease. In fact, every major disease process, degenerative disease process, which means not infectious, but everything else, why the body breaks there has been a study contributing these food based ages as a factor in why organ degeneration and immune degeneration occurs. So if people are listening and thinking, oh my gosh, you know, why does my pediatrician say don't feed so much junk food to my kids. It be it's because there are negative consequences. When you consume the byproduct of ultra process foods, long term, same thing happens with our dogs and cats. So if you hear this and you're like, oh my, I don't that. And I know ages, I don't feeding those. My cats, you categories completely youre switch from ultra to freeze, dried and freeze dried means that people are creating. And the nice thing about freeze dried is you can get some human grade options out there. They're taking a raw product, and then they're literally freezing it under a vacuum and then sucking the moisture out. And so it's shelf, but it has not been heat process, which is if you can't freeze dehydrated foods and dehydrated foods, air a lower heat, dehydrated food, gently cooked foods will is the category that, um, that you're referring to and gently cooked foods. I love now there's a big quality difference between gently cooked foods. So there are some amazing, you know, Oll and farmer's dog and pet plate. Some of these human grade direct to consumer gently cooked foods are delivered right to your door. They have a very short shelf life because the human grade foods are cooked, then they're frozen. And then they're shipped to your house and they're shipped frozen in these tubes. But the product itself has been gently heated once still incredibly nutritious. That's a totally different quality of food than let's say, fresh pet, which you buy at target, but it has a six month shelf. Like, and your question should be, Hey, how can you keep meat in the fridge for six months? I got the same makes. So there's big difference in GED category is my freezed G do homemade food and homemade food is how I got started. It was the very first book I ever wrote was a cookbook on how to make nutritionally, complete meals at home. You can gently cook it or you can feed it raw. But one of the things that's important will is that if you decide to feed your animals homemade food, first of all, you don't have to do all or nothing. Let's say that. You're like, okay, I love this idea of feeding homemade food, and I'm super busy. And I can only afford to, you know, timewise to maybe feed two of my dogs, 14 meals, homemade. That's awesome. Those are two meals that are gonna offer substantially better nutrition, then ultra processed food. So feed as many nutritionally, complete homemade meals as you can. So don't feel like it's all or nothing you can do once a week. You can do maybe fresh food in the morning and process food at night. There's a whole, there's no set hard and fast way that you have to make a switch and never feed any processed food again. So you can totally hybrid a protocol that works for your lifestyle and your budget, but the, the, the less amount of ultra food, you feed your animal, the more nutrients they're going to derive from fresh whole real foods. If you decide to do a homemade diet, you do need to follow a recipe so that you know that the food is nutritionally complete. Veterinarians have two big issues with homemade diets. Number one, people do them wrong. And then they create nutritional deficiencies, which harm animals. I've seen that most veterinarians listening have seen that. That's why we're opposed to people guessing at recipes. So don't just go, you know, and decide, Hey, I'm gonna do green peas and I'm gonna carrots. And some ground beef, I'm gonna throw some multivitamin in there. It's not Nutri. So, so there's online recipes that are nutritionally complete. There are books that offer recipes, but the premise is you need to follow a recipe. So, you know, doing right, the other category of fooding the food industry in it's the fastest grow, the food industry is the raw foods are obviously foods that have had to have no heat processing. And the research is quite clear. Those are the foods that offer the best, most bioavailable nutrients in whole food form. That is the food that is most nourishing to your dog or cat. So your audience is gonna say, that makes sense, but raw meat, you know, what, what about coli? What about salmonella? So here's the cool
Speaker 2:Thing before you, before you say that, I, I wanna interject something. My experience, the majority of veterinarians are opposed to feeding. One of the things they'll tell you is it'll make'em sick salmonella. So talk about that.
Speaker 3:Yes. Such such a good point. Yeah. Veterinarians are some of the, I of course love them. Mm-hmm<affirmative> but they're some of the most uneducated group of professionals pertaining to nutrition. And part of the reason is, well in vet school, our semester of small animal nutrition is for the most part taught either by a pet food rep or by a board certified veterinary nutritionist, veterinary schools, a Nutri teaching taught industry. Who's selling there's bias there to of the top veter, uh, none of the top pet food companies that sponsor veterinary schools, every veterinary school is aligned with a pet food brand. None of those brands market or sell any fresh food diet. So veterinarians in when they're in school, they are not getting any training about fresh foods because they're sponsored pet food company. They don't, they're not producing fresh food. So there's a direct conflict of interest. In fact, veterinary schools are teaching fresh food could be bad, but here's where the here's how you can tell that there's literally no education happening. Veterinarians are smart people. The downside is veterinarians are completely unaware that 50% of the commercially available raw food diet sold are actually sterile, will sterile. Meaning they've undergone a process, high pressure pasteurization, which is a cold thermal process that inactivates bacteria. And when you say that to veterinarians, it just stops them. It just stops them in their they're. Like, what, what, what are you talking about? Veterinarians are unaware that pet foods, every commercial pet food sold in, in the us has to abide by the food safety modernization act, which dictates that there's a zero tolerance for salmonella found in pet foods and raw foods have to adhere to that law. So all of the raw foods, commercially sold in the us have undergone some type of packaging control process. And many of them, 50% of raw foods are using a sterilization technique, which means those raw foods are sterile, which means that there's safest food on the market. Dry food is certainly sterile. So just by helping veterinarians become a little bit more educated, uh, that will do a big part decreasing veterinary fears. Now, veterinarians are fearful of course, of homemade diets because the meat that you buy at your grocery store is not sterile. And so they want to make sure that the meat you are buying at the grocery store, which may contain a low level of salmonella or coli, they wanna make sure that you're either cooking those meats to remove that bacteria or that you are practicing safe hygiene for when you are handling those meats in your kitchen. And that's very true. You know, if you're making burgers for your family and you're using a cutting board in your counter, after you make the raw meat, you take it out to your grill. You're gonna disinfect your surfaces in your kitchen. And the exact same hygienic techniques will be used when you're preparing raw meat, dog food. Cause you're using the same quality of meat. You're going to your grocery store. You're buying meat, you're following the recipe and you're gonna disinfect your countertops. Veterinarians. Usually I have not encountered vets that are wildly concerned that dogs or cats are going get stick with coli salmonella on occasion. Will I have? Those are veterinarians that I, all I have to do is say, you know, that dogs lick their butts, right? And you know that when we check just basic healthy rectal swabs on kibble fed dogs, that they culture salmonella and E colar, which are natural inhabitants of their GI tract dogs evolutionarily can eat dead things. You know, they'll scavenge on dead animals, they'll eat poop. They eat bacterial lace ridden, you know, carpets that are teaming with coli and they don't die. So of course we don't want to intentionally give salmonella E coli to your dog by eating a rotten car. That's been laying out the field for, for, for a week, but that is not the quality of meat you're buying at your grocery store. So the vast majority of veterinarians, aren't concerned about salmonella E coli for dogs and cats, because they're aware that those are natural inhabitants that are already existing in your dog or cats, GI tract, where veterinarian get concerned is the fact that you're handling Rami in your kitchen and that your human family members can become sick. If they're unaware that you're feeding your doctor. So once you've identified those variables, and if your veterinarian says, I'm really concerned about the, the pathogen load and your buying food, you can explain to your veterinarian and, oh, here's the good news. I dunno if you are aware that the food at the food safety modernization that dictates that raw pet food has to be free from salmonella. And once veterinarians have been educated on that piece, they tend to fully embrace the concept that you are doing everything you can to feed fresher, less processed food. Because the flip side of that means more nutrients, more food based nutrients that are going to protect your dog or cats from degenerative diseases. So part of this is just bring gently and lovingly bringing your veterinarian up to feed on why fresh foods are not just safe, but if you follow a recipe, they can be done nourishing, nutritionally and correctly. If you decide to do a homemade diet. So it's just an educational process that you have during a conversation or two or three with your veterinarian, who is probably not fresh food literate
Speaker 4:Now, Dr. Becker. Um, so I, I have a quick question when it comes to, you know, feeding this raw, this raw diet, um, and I'm, I'm a lot of our viewers are actually asking a very, very similar question here is like, what, what is the, I guess, for lack of better terms, the end all be all here. Because when we're, when we're feeding a raw diet, we're sitting here talking about creating a nutritionally, complete meal and diet for our dogs. So when we, what if we do decide to switch our dogs to a raw feed, like, are we adding like, are, are there, is there like a, a certain brand that you recommend or, or are we also still following these, these recipes for these raw foods that we need to be adding in? You know, certain fruits, vegetables, different grains, things like that. That's what a lot of people are asking in the comments here.
Speaker 2:I think this is a really good opportunity, Dr. Becker for you to plug your cookbook.
Speaker 3:<laugh> well, so good questions within the umbrella of raw food listeners. There are commercial diets where all of the math has been done for you. So if you are looking for, if you don't wanna, if you say I'm not in the kitchen, I'm not about I don't cook for, I'm not about make food for my cat. You can buy a nutritionally, complete raw food diet, and it'll stay right on the front of the package. This food meets all life stages requirements, you know, for, for, for requirements, there'll be a nutritional ADE statement, right on the, of the package that you buy. You're gonna look for that. The other option, if you don't buy complete commercially available raw foods, those are gonna be found in the freezer section of your indie upscale pet boutique. That's my best recommendation. Remember that big box stores, Petco pet smart. They do carry some frozen rough foods that is not the best place for the most knowledgeable employees in that, uh, small, independent pet food retailers, your locally owned family run smaller indie boutiques nutrition are these employees, passions. The owners oftentimes put their job and open a pet store because they're looking to provide the best information, the better quality frozen raw foods, the better quality humanly cooked foods, their passion is food. So they're gonna be able to answer all your questions, partner with you. When you come back a day and half questions about this, you're gonna be able to forge a relationship with small independent retailers. And that's where I'm gonna recommend. If you've got questions, find your local mom and pop pet store and go there. And they will partner with you to get your questions answer when it comes to buying nutritionally, complete raw food. When we're talking about making homemade diet, certainly, you know, I do have, as well mentioned, I do have arrested book that has both cooked formulas and raw food formulas that you can certainly follow. Uh, you can also dog.com. The website for the book has a bunch of free nutritionally, complete recipes. You guys can go on there, log and just read through them, but you'll see the difference between when you're gonna cook or make homemade raw food for your dog. If you're gonna be in your kitchen, making pet food, you'll follow a recipe that looks pretty basic on the front side. It'll list the ingredients at, but then they're gonna give you this nutritional profile that shows you all the amino acid, all the vitamins, all the fatty acids for that recipe. So that if your vet, or if you say, Hey, I just wanna make sure that this recipe, that I have enough amino acids, that my dog is not gonna get DCM from amino acid deficiency. I wanna know that those, all the homemade recipes that I'm recommending are gonna come with this nutritional profile that you can physically look and see, and you'll say, okay, here's what this recipe. Here's the amount of nutrients that this recipe contains here's and I can, I'm meeting my dog requirements and you have those in place. You can take a, you know, that you're following a recipe that is not just meeting minimum nutritional requirements. We're not just sustaining life with fresh living whole foods. We're giving our animals, the raw materials to actually have a functional healing response. If they're sick. And if they're young and not sick, we are super fortifying their bodies to give them the raw materials to not degenerate over time. And that really is what nourishing animals well is all about. It's making the decision to spend money on really good ingredients before our animals get fixed. So we are not spending money on drugs to treat the symptoms after they've already degenerated. It's just a different way of spending money on the front end, buying healthy foods versus buying drugs years on the road.
Speaker 4:So then would it be safe to argue that if more and more pet owners were feeding their animals, these nutritionally complete meals that the, the, the literature that we have on, you know, what is the average lifespan of all these animals? Would it be in your opinion, a much different number?
Speaker 3:What I can, I can't answer that because we've not done yet. Lifetime studies, meaning from birth, tell death animals are on fresh food, their whole life. No, one's done that. We are working to do that now. Okay. Which means you have a cohort of animals from the time that they're born, they're we from mama's milk onto fresh, raw Nutri, complete food. And then they're fed that their entire lives until they die. We don't have a lifetime study on fresh food. But what I will tell you is at one of the variables with every single owner of these exceptionally long lived dogs that we interviewed for the forever dog book, one common variable, whether it was Maggie the 30 year old Kelsey in Australia, whether it was push the 26 year old dog and Budapest Tigger, the 22 year old pit bull from Texas, all of these owners, when we interviewed them, they all incorporated fresh food into their dog's meals. So all I can relate to you is that from my clinical experience, when I started my animal hospital, you know, in 1989, I encouraged all of my clients to incorporate at least some fresh foods. Whether you swap out milk for, for blueberries, whether you scoop out 10% of your dog and replace it with 10% fresher foods, whether you do a kibble in the morning and rock food at night, or whether you're like screw that I can afford to do all fresh food, I'm never feeding my dog junk food. Again, all of those variables are taking a step towards increasing health and lifespan. And so by you intentionally reducing the variables that create disease and feeding more foods that intentionally promote health and longevity. We know that we're swinging the pendulum in the right direction, to the extent knowing exactly how many and years we're adding our life. I can't tell you that, that hasn't been, but I tell you clinical experience of the oldest in the world, they all ate fresh.
Speaker 2:Um, I, I, I don't know if you can talk about this, but I've had clients that have put their dogs on raw food. They, in my opinion, made the mistake of going cold Turkey from kibble to raw food. Their dogs had incredible diarrhea. They took their dog to the veterinarian, the veterinarian, and said your dog got sick because of the raw food salmon, Manila poisoning.
Speaker 3:Yep. Yep. Yep. And I'm,
Speaker 2:And that's not what it was. That's not what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Exactly.
Speaker 2:They dogs don't get that salmon Manila. Isn't it true that their, uh, digestive track is a third, as long as ours. And it goes through a lot faster and therefore it's not as problematic.
Speaker 3:So it's very, very true that dogs and cats both have very short GI tracts compared to humans. Very short. Uh, now dogs and cats get food poisoning. Let's be clear. People say dogs and cats can't get food poisoning. Oh yeah, they absolutely can. However, they're much more because of their physiology. They have strong stomach acid sort of GI tract. They, you know, kitties are still evolutionary adapted to hot mice and cats. If you give them the opportunity will still hunt mice and they don't die when they eat the mouse, they they're, they're eating their evolutionary food source. So nothing has changed in terms of a dog or cat physiology, just because kibble, just because ultra pet food has been around a hundred years, doesn't mean that a dog or cat physiology has changed in the last hundred years. They're still absolutely very well adapted to eat their evolutionary food source, which are your rabbits for dogs and for cats. They're a OK. Doing that. But listeners, anytime you switch your dog cat food, you don't ever do it cold Turkey. Anytime. Even if you go from kibble, Ultrapro extruded food to, to freeze dried food, icy, blow diarrhea with that icy blow diarrhea, going from dehydrated food back to kibble. So it's not about switching to a different food category. It's about your dog or cat microbiome being adapted enough to handle a food change. Yeah. You and I humans. If humans have healthy microbiomes, if a gut bacteria is healthy, we should be able to eat eggs for breakfast. One day, pancakes, the next and bacon, the next and not have diarrhea. If dog and cats, GI tracts are balanced and healthy and resilient. My protein every day. My dogs, my cats, my dogs and cats never eat the same food. Tri they'll eat chicken, quail beef rabbit, um, pheasant goat. I'm rotating through a different protein every day. And they never have diarrhea because I made them. I made them intentionally have got the, I wanted my dogs and catch GIRES to be so resilient that their microbiome was as strong as, as mine. I wanna be able to eat something different and not have GI consequences. But I created that in my, if you haven't done that. If you've been feeding for three years and your dog never had anything, don't switch their food tomorrow. You will do five. Maybe you'll do a taper. Maybe you'll do a bite of apple. Maybe you'll do half of a minicar. You know, one mini carrot sliced up yields about 10 micro treats. Training treats. Start with that. So as your dog or cat GI tract becomes healthy as their microbiome, diversifies, as they gain GI resiliency, then you can add in 5% new food, take out 5% old food. Then you do 10%. Then you go 80, 20, 70, 30, 60, 40. Then you do percent old food, 50% new food. You don't just up and switch your food. Youll have diarrhea, but the diarrhea isn't because you ified your pet. It's you switch their food too fast. And for, for the veterinarians that say, oh my gosh, you poisoned your pet. Sadly, veterinarians are amazing, but we are not psychic. So any veterinarian that looks at an animal and says your pet has salmonella, it's like, oh, really psychic veterinarian. You are amazing that you would be able to see that from across the group. You have a skill that no one else has. When I, when I have asked for fecal culture results on, you know, I do a lot of, of people. I, I see a lot of clients that, of course their veterinarians have said, don't do raw. When I have looked at fecal culture results. I, in my 25 years of recommending raw food, I have never seen an E coli salmonella case. That's not to say it can't happen, but I have never seen an animal on raw food. Have a raging case of salmonella or E coli diarrhea. I've absolutely seen them have diarrhea, but not caused from those pathogens. So the premise is, if you're going switch your animal's food to anything new, you're going do it very slowly. Cause who, who wants to feel gross and crappy. We don't wanna give our animals diarrhea, just go slow. And you're gonna use poop as your guide. If your animals poop gets a little soft, you're gonna back off on the transition. So a little bit of common sense goes a long way when it comes to diversifying your dog's diet.
Speaker 2:Wow. There's so much information. And unfortunately, so little time we are at, uh, one minute after 10, we we've run over, um, do us a favor. Can you go ahead and give out your websites and ways that, uh, our viewers can get more information about you about your book, the forever dog, about your, um, I know you're involved with, um, different supplements and stuff. So could you give that information out for our viewers?
Speaker 3:Sure. It's really easy. My website is Karen becker.com and the forever dog websites, even easier for dog.com. And you can go there read, learn. You'll learn more about what I do and who I, and what I believe on my website has a to of resources about the benefits of fresh recipes, what the research shows about longevity, fresh foods. You can find all that information on dog.com.
Speaker 2:Perfect. I appreciate you being able to make the time, like I said, I know you're incredibly busy. Everybody's wanting you. Um, so we are so fortunate to have you on today. Absolutely. Hopefully we can have you on again. I'd love to just do a show specifically on microbiome. Yeah. That's become a really big thing, but again, thank you so much, Dr. Becker. We really appreciate you being here today. Thank you.
Speaker 3:Thank you. It's been a joy. I can't wait to come back.
Speaker 2:All right, thanks. Have a great day. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was it. Dr. Karen Becker. The show that we.